Figuring out what you want is a process

People often tell me they’re not sure what they want to do with their life.

Is it to become the most-respected software developer in a particular niche? Is it to move to a tropical island and become a divemaster? Is it to dramatically improve the quality of the schools in your local town, because your kid did not get the education they deserved?

Or is it something else entirely?

Of course, I don’t know either.

What happens next, though, is that many people stop taking action. They know they want something different, but because they’re not sure what it is, they wait to do anything until they know where they want to go.

That’s understandable. It can feel like a waste to spend time and energy going in the wrong direction. But, listen to this:

There is no wrong direction.

If you know you want to spend your time doing different things, the worst thing you can do is to continue to do the same thing you’ve been doing for so long now. Because doing the same thing over and over again won’t teach you anything new.

The key to find out where you want to be is to try things and learn from them. Considering improving your public speaking? Visit a public speaking club as a guest. Afterwards, ask yourself: Did I like that? Why or why not?

You will probably experience fear initially: fear of wasting time, fear of embarrassing yourself, or fear of failing. That’s normal; it happens to all of us. What you want to do is to act despite fear.

In the early stages, it helps to try just about anything. It’s not a failure if you try something and realize that it’s not it for you. In fact, that’s a success! Because you’ve learned something about yourself.

You see, it is extremely difficult to go from where you are now to where you want to be without trying some things that aren’t it. Discovering what you don’t like is practically required to have success.

(This is also one of the things you’ll learn if you join my 30-Day Creator Challenge. When you write, create videos, or start a podcast, you don’t need to know in advance what it will be about. Just start writing or talking about something and you’ll figure out quickly whether you like talking about that and whether others want to hear what you have to say.)

So, figuring out what you want to do is a process. And the sooner you start the process, the sooner you’ll figure out what you want.

Yours,

— Peter

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